Photos No Longer Count Against Twitter's 140 Characters

What changed yesterday

From yesterday, Monday, attaching a photo, a video, a GIF or a poll to a tweet no longer uses up any of its 140 characters. Quoting another tweet no longer does either.

Until now, a photo was counted as a link, and that link took more than twenty characters. Quoting a tweet worked the same way.

A business tweet with a photo had a little under 120 characters left for words. Now it has all 140, whatever is attached.

It is a small change to the rules. What a business does with the extra room is the part worth thinking about.

What it changes for a business account

• Every update can carry a photo without shortening the message.
• Quoting a customer leaves room for a real reply.
• Polls, videos and GIFs now sit beside the full 140.
• Links still count, at a fixed length whatever the address.
• Words, hashtags and names count exactly as before.

The fourth is the one to keep in mind while writing. A link to the page with the details is often the most useful thing in a business tweet, and it still costs characters.

The temptation to add hashtags

When space opens up, the instinct is to fill it, and the easiest filler is hashtags: a stack of them for the town, the product, the season and the mood.

Hashtags help someone find a tweet only when they search for that tag or follow it. Few people follow a tag like local or fresh, and a row of them makes a tweet read like an advert.

They also slow everyone down. Screen readers read every one aloud, often as a run of mangled words, before the listener reaches anything useful.

One hashtag that people actually use, such as an event's or a town's, is plenty. Often none is better.

Spend the space on the message

A business tweet works when a stranger could act on it: what, where, when, how much, and what to do next.

The photo shows what. The text should carry what the photo cannot: today's hours, the price, how many are left, whether to book.

Write it to make sense to someone who has never heard of you, because retweets carry it to exactly those people.

Name the place rather than saying here, and the day rather than relying on the timestamp.

Photos that say something

With photos free, every tweet can have one, so the question moves from whether to include a photo to whether it is worth looking at.

Use real, current photographs of today's stock, today's work or today's room. The timeline may show only a cropped preview, so keep the subject near the middle of the frame.

Twitter's iPhone and Android apps can also add a short description to each photo for people who use screen readers. The option has to be switched on first, under accessibility in the app's settings.

Video, GIFs and polls

Video in the timeline starts silently as people scroll, so a clip needs its point visible without sound: a line of text on screen, or a tweet that says what it shows.

GIFs suit a short loop, such as a product turning or a door opening, and little else.

Polls are useful for a genuine question, such as which flavour to bring back, and now leave room to explain what the result will decide.

A worked example

A farm stand on a rural road sells its own corn, berries, squash and eggs from June to October, and posts on Twitter most mornings about what has been picked.

Its tweets were a photo and two or three words, such as corn's in, followed by six hashtags about local food, farming and the harvest.

The photos were retweeted by people in town. The stand still took calls all day asking whether it was open, until when, what the corn cost and whether it took cards.

The tweets showed what was ready and nothing else. The hashtags had used the room the useful facts needed, and the photo's link had used the rest.

From this week, each tweet keeps the photo and adds the day's hours, the price by the dozen, what is running low and one hashtag for the town.

The profile now carries the address and the season's hours, and a pinned tweet gives this week's.

Quoted tweets and replies

Quoting a customer's tweet to thank them, or to answer a question others might share, now leaves the full 140 characters for your reply.

Use it for thanks and for useful answers. Be careful with complaints: quoting one shows it to all your followers, many of whom would never have seen it.

A complaint is better answered with a short reply to the customer, and the detail moved to a phone call or a direct message.

Where Twitter fits

Twitter suits news that is true today and stale tomorrow: what is fresh, what is on, what has changed.

Facts that stay true for months belong on the website, where a tweet can link to them, and on your Google listing, where many people look first.

Never let Twitter be the only place your hours are written down. Plenty of customers will never see a tweet.

The counter-case

For an account with a few dozen followers, or a business whose news is not timely, such as an accountant, the change makes little difference. Twitter may not be where that business should spend its time at all.

And some tweets are better without a photo: a quick answer, a correction, a thank-you.

For any account that posts updates with pictures, though, use the freed space for the facts people would otherwise phone to ask, not for more hashtags.

Before the next tweet

1. Read your last ten tweets as a stranger would.
2. Count the hashtags in each one.
3. Keep one hashtag at most, and only a useful one.
4. Add the fact people phone to ask.
5. Switch on image descriptions in the app.
6. Link to the page with the full details.
7. Pin a tweet with this week's hours.

Step four is the one that pays. A tweet that answers the question people would otherwise call about saves a phone call, and it informs the people who would never have called at all.

Why posting things worth replying to beats posting at the perfect minute is covered in Twitter will show the best tweets first.

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